Labeo let it ride. If she wanted to feel sorry for that little turd, that was her business, not his. He’d done the job he was being paid to do, and he was behind the general all the way on this. Let criminals think you’re a soft touch, and every bloody thief will be climbing up the balcony! So while she ranted, he congratulated himself on being such a damn good shot. That arrow went exactly where he’d planned it.
Quite at what point Her Snootyship intended to shut up, Labeo didn’t know. But he was mighty glad when he heard the general call his name from the far side of the wall. The master hadn’t been expected back for ages, but wouldn’t he be pleased to hear his captain had bagged a sewer rat this morning!
Except there were something different about the general’s bellow. Every bit as terse. Nothing unusual about that! And no less urgent, neither. (The general weren’t a patient man!) But... Well, it just sounded different, that was all.
“I’m over here, General,” he called back. “Caught a burglar stealing your gold. Shot him as he escaped.”
“Is he dead?” Volso wanted to know, scaling the ladder two steps at a time. He was a tall man in maybe his forty-second summer, broad of shoulder and square of jaw, his skin weathered from years of campaigning and thickened from too many nights cradling the wine jar. But he cut a commanding enough figure on and off the field, and regular training in the gymnasium had clearly paid off. It was a lean and nimble figure that swung itself over the adjoining wall.
“Couldn’t be deader,” Labeo told him proudly, as his employer dropped to the ground.
“Pity,” Volso snarled, wiping the dirt from his hands down his tunic. He marched over to where Junius and Claudia were conversing quietly over the body and rammed his foot hard into the corpse. “Bastard didn’t deserve an easy death.”
“Volso!” Horrified, Claudia stepped in front before he could land a second kick. “You are on my property, General, and I’ll thank you to have some respect for it, for me, and for the dead.”
“Respect?” Labeo feared the general’s bellow would deafen the widow. “Respect, you say?” He pushed her roughly aside and slammed his boot into the boy’s side as he had originally intended. “Save your sympathy, Claudia Seferius. If Labeo hadn’t killed him, public execution certainly would.”
“Stealing is a civil matter—” she began.
“Stealing is,” the general agreed. “Murder isn’t. That boy you’re so protective of didn’t just rob me of my gold and silver. He robbed me of my wife.” Volso turned to face his archer. “Callista’s body is still sprawled across the bedroom floor,” he said quietly. “Where this bastard strangled her.”
Moonlight had turned the garden paths to silver. The feathery leaves of artemisia and the pale purple flowers of sweet rocket released musky perfume into heat that pulsated like a cricket, and mice rustled beneath the fan-trained peach trees, pears, and apricots. Bats squeaked on the wing in search of moths. An owl hooted from the cedar three doors down, and a frog plopped gently into the pool from a water-lily leaf.
The slaves were not back yet. While they milked their precious holiday for all it was worth, there was none of the customary clattering of pots and skillets from the kitchens. No bickering coming out of the married quarters. The heather brooms and garden shears were silent. Everything was silent.
Seated on a white marble bench with her back against an apple tree, Claudia watched her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat chase a mouse round the shrine in the corner of the garden and slowly sipped her wine. The wine was dark. Dark as Claudia’s mood. And every bit as heavy. Cradling the green glass goblet in both hands, she stared up at the night sky without blinking. The stars would make life easy for navigation out at sea tonight, she thought. Directly overhead, the dragon roared and Hercules strode purposefully across the heavens, wielding his olive-wood club. How appropriate, she mused, that it was the constellation of Sagittarius which was starting to rise over the southern horizon. Sagittarius, the Archer...
The army had come, conducted its investigation in the twinkling of an eye, and departed hours ago. The young man’s body had been carted away unceremoniously on a stretcher and Labeo had been lauded for a job well done, both by the army and his bereaved employer. It had been left to Claudia and her bodyguard to stack the stolen objects back inside the sack, in which Junius later returned them to their owner.
Still staring at the stars, she sipped her wine.
“So then.” A tall, patrician body eased itself onto the bench, leaned its back against the rough bark of the apple tree, and crossed its long patrician legs at its booted ankles. “Cut and dried.”
Even above the scents of the junipers and cypress, the heliotrope and the lilies, she could smell his spicy sandalwood unguent. Caught a faint whiff of the rosemary in which his trademark long linen tunic had been rinsed.
“I wondered how long it would take before Marcus Cornelius Orbilio arrived on the scene,” she said without turning her head.
Up there on Olympus, Fortune must be wetting her knickers. Claudia topped up her goblet from the jar. Dammit, she couldn’t make a move without the Security Police popping up in the form of their only aristocratic investigator, who seemed to view her — let’s call them misdemeanours — as his fast track to the Senate. Still. What did she care? She had nothing to hide from him this time. For once, Marcus Make-Room-for-Me-in-the-Assembly Orbilio was whistling in the dark.
She couldn’t see him, but knew that he was grinning. “Why?” he asked. “Were you running a book on when I’d arrive?”
“Tch, tch, tch. You should know that gambling’s against the law, Orbilio.”
“Which happens to be one of the reasons I’ve called round.” A shower of bronze betting receipts scattered on the path. “Yours, I believe.”
“Never seen them before in my life,” she replied. Bugger. That was the best boxer in Rome she’d backed with those. Half a brickwork’s worth, if she recalled.
“What about these?” he said, showering a dozen more.
And that, unless she missed her guess, was the other half, invested at five to one on a Scythian wrestler from the north coast of the Black Sea. Bugger, bugger, bugger.
“We caught the bookie touting outside the imperial palace,” he said cheerfully. “You know, you really should be more careful who you have dealings with, Claudia.”
She skewered him with a glare. “Damn right.”
“How much of Gaius’s money do you have left?” he asked.
The old adage was true, she thought ruefully. The best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one...
“Jupiter alone knows what will happen to the family fortune once I’m married to you,” he continued smoothly. “We’ll probably be celebrating our fifth anniversary in the gutter.”
She supposed it was the moon making twinkles in his eyes, but in its clear, three-quarters light she could see every curl in his thick mop of hair, the solid musculature of his chest, the crisp, dark hairs on the back of his forearms.
“I would go to the lions before I went to the altar with you, Marcus Cornelius, and if you’ve finished littering my garden path, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to sod off. I have a pressing engagement.” She patted the wine jar beside her. “With my friend Bacchus here.”
“Hmm.” He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “You seem to be having a lot of metal littering your garden path all of a sudden. Tell me about this morning.”